Sunday, July 22, 2012

Have you ever experienced wanting to love God more but you feel so empty that it seems you have nothing to give? Or you want to walk with Him but somehow you don’t have the strength to do so?

For some there comes a time that you feel no more emotions towards God. And your will power has failed you.

And all that remains is emptiness.

…dryness.

There comes a time in our life that our relationship with God is less like taking a ride with Him, but pushing a car that ran out of gas. You stop feeling the exhilaration of the ride and just feel the weight of the car as you push it… up hill.

And yet we know that we have to move forward. Towards Christ.

To stop is to quit on God. To leave Him hanging.

We can’t get out of the car and leave Jesus there because it does not feel good anymore.
When our well runs dry, God asks us to go beyond ourselves. He asks us to go beyond our current faith, current hope and current love.

How do you know you really have faith in God?

When you have no more reason or evidence to trust Him but still chose to do so.

How do you know you really have hope in God?

When you have lived in the darkness for so long yet you choose to believe that dawn will come.

How do you know you really love God?

When everything falls apart and you still choose to worship Him.

Most of our faith, hope and love for God is mixed with selfishness to different degrees. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we shall realize that the quality of our relationship with God is somehow dependent on how much we get out Him.

Some decide to a “person of faith” because they think that faith will help them get what they want. Their faith is not really much having a relationship with God, rather it is a way of using faith to get to God to benefit themselves.

Others love God because they expect God to love them back by giving them what they want. As long as God give them what they want, they shall continue to profess their love for God, to Him and to others.

Some people do the “Works of the Lord” because they are searching for meaning in life. That is not bad, but it could be better. You do the “work” out of love.

Emotional dryness can help us purify our faith, hope and love. Not only to God but to others as well. Dryness can help strengthen our wills. It is in our will that choices are made. We might always be in control of our emotions, but we are always in control of our decisions. And we always have to choose God even if our emotions say otherwise.

Even thought faith, hope and love is supernatural gift from God, it is also a choice on our part. The gift can be accepted and cultivated, or rejected and thrown away.

So what do we do when dryness comes?

We “choose” do what we “know” we should do.

If we don’t feel like pray, pray. If we don’t feel like serving others, serve. If we don’t feel like going to Mass, go.

Once we have overcome our own sluggish emotions and selfishness, we shall be free to love.

Even in the desert, life can be found.

"We should be grateful to the Lord our God, for putting us to the test, as he did our forefathers. Recall how he dealt with Abraham, and how he tried Isaac, and all that happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia while he was tending the flocks of Laban, his mother’s brother. Not for vengeance did the Lord put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has he done so with us. It is by way of admonition that he chastises those who are close to him".
Judith 8:25-27

Monday, July 9, 2012

One of the things people are confused these days is truth. Many think that truth is something that man makes, and not accept. And he has made a lot of so-called “truths” out there that the common man is confused what to believe in.

But truth is not made in the hands of man, but in the heart of God. God reveals Truth, man is only to accept or reject it.

Because of our ignorance of the truth and most of all our apathy towards it, we have made our society unstable and shaky.

Truth is the building block of everything. All scientists, engineers, architects or any kind of builders must submit themselves to the truth of math and science. Imagine an airplane engineer who rejects the Law of Gravity. Just think of the planes he will build. Would you ride that plane? If an architect has rejected the laws of math and physics, would his building stand or fall? Would you like this architect to build your house?

It is no wonder our society is in chaos and falling apart. There is no Truth to hold it together.

So why is there a famine of truth?

Because we have rejected God, who is Truth, and His Church, the voice of His Truth.

Because God’s Truth is demanding, man has searched for other sources of truth. Truths that are pleasing and convenient to himself. Even if they are not true. And so man has wandered to seek “his” truths, the truths he likes. And the more he wanders off away from God’s truth, the more he loses THE Truth within himself. He is now filled with different so-called truths that contradict themselves. He is now neither pleased nor convenient but miserable.

When he rejected God’s Truth, he unknowingly had thrown joy out of the window. For real joy abides in Truth. No Truth, no joy. You can never be really happy until you know the truth about yourself. And that truth is that you are made for God. You are made to be holy. You are made for self-giving love. Apart from His Truth, there is only poverty.

Yes, days are coming, says the Lord GOD,
when I will send famine upon the land:
Not a famine of bread, or thirst for water,
but for hearing the word of the LORD.
Then shall they wander from sea to sea
and rove from the north to the east
In search of the word of the LORD,
but they shall not find it.
-Amos 8: 11-12

If you feel like you are in a famine, desperate and joyless, maybe because you have deprived yourself of the Word of God… the food of our being.
The Word is waiting for you to come to Him.

Who is the Animated Catholic?

is Daxx Bondoc, a Catholic animator/blogger responding to Blessed John Paul II's call for the New Evangelization using the "new media". This blog is faithful to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
Email me at: theanimatedcatholic@gmail.com